KAY-MARIE FLETCH­ER

Se­nior Re­porter

kay-marie.fletch­er@guardian.co.tt

The Op­po­si­tion is ex­press­ing con­cern about the fu­ture of the T&T Elec­tric­i­ty Com­mis­sion (TTEC) now that the Gov­ern­ment is on the cusp of re­ject­ing the rec­om­men­da­tions made by the Reg­u­lat­ed In­dus­tries Com­mis­sion (RIC) to in­crease elec­tric­i­ty rates. 

In 2022, af­ter pub­lic con­sul­ta­tion, the RIC draft­ed a re­port with rec­om­men­da­tions to in­crease elec­tric­i­ty rates for res­i­den­tial and com­mer­cial cus­tomers over a five-year pe­ri­od.

Padarath re­ject­ed the rec­om­mend­ed in­creas­es, stat­ing that cit­i­zens should not have to pay for the Gov­ern­ment’s fail­ure to pay its debts.

How­ev­er, dur­ing an Op­po­si­tion press con­fer­ence at the Of­fice of the Op­po­si­tion Leader in Port-of-Spain yes­ter­day, for­mer pub­lic util­i­ties min­is­ter Mar­vin Gon­za­les ques­tioned how the Gov­ern­ment in­tend­ed to set­tle TTEC’s US$1 bil­lion debt to the Na­tion­al Gas Com­pa­ny of T&T (NGC). 

Gon­za­les said, “The gov­ern­ment can­not sim­ply scrap a re­port and not tell the pop­u­la­tion what are its plans and what are its poli­cies with re­spect to the set­tling of $7 bil­lion owed to the NGC.”

Gon­za­les warned that not pay­ing NGC could have se­ri­ous im­pli­ca­tions and hint­ed at fu­ture black­outs. 

He said, “Scrap­ping a plan sounds good, looks good but it can have dire se­ri­ous fi­nan­cial im­pli­ca­tions, be­cause at the end of the day, Gov­ern­ment’s re­spon­si­bil­i­ty is to en­sure that TTEC pro­vides the peo­ple of this coun­try with a re­li­able sup­ply of elec­tric­i­ty, be­cause if TTEC is un­able to do so it can have se­ri­ous im­pli­ca­tions to the na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ty and to all con­sumers.”

He added that the RIC re­port in­clud­ed plans to put TTEC on a “sus­tain­able fi­nan­cial path” over a five-year pe­ri­od, to set­tle its month­ly oblig­a­tions to the NGC, as it recog­nised that the cur­rent arrange­ment was un­sus­tain­able.

How­ev­er, Pub­lic Util­i­ties Min­is­ter Bar­ry Padarath blamed the Op­po­si­tion for al­low­ing the debt from TTEC to NGC to bal­loon to mil­lions over the past nine years.

Padarath said, “First of all, the for­mer min­is­ter is shame­less to make this sort of pro­nounce­ment on the is­sue, know­ing that in the first in­stance, the bill be­tween NGC and TTEC ac­cu­mu­lat­ed un­der the Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) in the last nine years. That is how we ar­rived at that sit­u­a­tion be­tween NGC and TTEC.”

“The sec­ond is­sue has to be the $1.4B in out­stand­ing re­ceiv­ables that was ac­cu­mu­lat­ed un­der the for­mer ad­min­is­tra­tion in the last nine years, as it re­lates to out­stand­ing re­ceiv­ables from min­istries, state en­ter­pris­es, state com­pa­nies that was left to lan­guish again.”

Padarath said the Gov­ern­ment did not in­tend to let the bill con­tin­ue to rise, as he be­lieved there must be a way to ad­dress the debt with­out putting it on the backs of TTEC’s cus­tomers. 

He added, “I can tell you as of now, Min­istry of Plan­ning and my­self, we are ac­tive­ly look­ing over the next three to four years at how we can re­duce that cost be­tween NGC and TTEC, but it can­not be that we are ask­ing the pop­u­la­tion to pay for sub­stan­dard ser­vice, to pay for a com­pa­ny that has been al­lowed to run in­to the red, not of the fault of the con­sumer but rather the fault of the for­mer ad­min­is­tra­tion, and that falls square­ly on the shoul­ders of for­mer min­is­ter Mar­vin Gon­za­les, who al­lowed it to bal­loon by tak­ing this very hands-off ap­proach with­out look­ing to see how they could have mit­i­gat­ed the im­pacts of this bal­loon­ing sit­u­a­tion be­tween NGC and TTEC.”

Padarath al­so as­sured the pub­lic that there would be no dis­rup­tion of ser­vice.

Padarath added, “We are en­sur­ing at this stage that we have no such chal­lenges in terms of black­outs and so on. This does not im­pact on the pro­duc­tion of elec­tric­i­ty. The pro­duc­tion of elec­tric­i­ty is con­tin­gent at this point in time on the nat­ur­al gas sup­ply. I think what is start­ing to hap­pen is that the alarmists hop­ing that the pop­u­la­tion will buy in­to that, for the PNM to gain po­lit­i­cal cur­ren­cy is what is afoot, so I take no stock in that ar­gu­ment put for­ward by Mar­vin (Gon­za­les). We have our plans in place to make sure that that does not hap­pen. I give you the as­sur­ance that will not hap­pen.”

Padarath con­firmed that he took the rec­om­men­da­tion to Cab­i­net last week, and it was un­der re­view.

He said that the Gov­ern­ment would soon make an of­fi­cial state­ment on the RIC re­port.